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Why This Is The Healthiest Beverage You Can Drink: A Harvard MD Explains

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

Coffee is really good for you. I make that statement as a physician, and liver specialist. In fact, coffee actually may well be the healthiest beverage you can drink.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.mindbodygreen.com

See on Scoop.it – Cardiovascular Disease: PHARMACO-THERAPY

The health benefits of coffee: what science really shows

Few people consider coffee a health drink. In fact, most people don’t even know how effective coffee appears to be in preventing a variety of very serious illnesses, or, when they learn the facts, they remain quite dubious. They ask incredulously, “You’re saying coffee is probably better for me than tea? Coffee really can reduce the risk of developing a number of common cancers? It can decrease the risk of developing gallstones and tooth decay? It decreases the risk of developing cirrhosis of the liver? It can even decrease the risk of developing dementia? Dr. Chopra, are you nuts?”

The facts are indisputable; coffee appears to offer a great variety of benefits, including substantial protection against liver cirrhosis, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, cognitive decline and dementia, gallstones, tooth decay, and a host of common cancers, including prostate, colon, endometrial, and skin cancer. There also is a lower rate of suicide among coffee drinkers.

But perhaps the single most startling conclusion that has emerged from the more than 19,000 studies concerning the impact of coffee on health is that people who drink a lot of coffee appear to live longer than people who drink little or no coffee. That’s an incredible statement, but there are several good studies that support it. For example, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health review of 21 studies conducted between 1966 and 2013 that included almost one million participants concluded that people who drank as many as four cups of coffee daily reduced mortality by 16 percent.